6 Things to Know in Taking Care of your Watermelon

Hi there again! Hope you are all experimenting with watermelons and we are glad that we could help. Here are some more insights for growing watermelons successfully in containers. Taking care of watermelon plants is a bit of tedious work. But hey that’s where we come in. with these simple points you can make sure that you are doing justice to your watermelons. Let us see some important steps in Taking care of watermelon plants in container.

FERTILIZER

These plants are heavy feeders(Could see form their size right!).They require constant nutrition. Feed them weekly once with liquid fertilizers that are rich in nitrogen. Once the plant sets fruits use a fertilizer with less nitrogen. Consider liquid seaweed fertilizer.

PRUNING

Now this is something most of us don’t even consider doing. Hey can’t blame you; who wants to do some extra work? But what if we get some extra large and sweet melons for little cutting here and there? Cool isn’t it! Let us see where to cut shall we: Watermelon plants have single root system to support the entire plant. So it is clear that the more the branches are the weak the plant becomes. So select some main branches and prune those that emerge from them. Also remove those plants that are damaged and disease

POLLINATION

Watermelon plants produce male and female flowers. So it needs pollinators like butterflies and bees to do the work for them. But most of us live in urban areas (The pollinators repellent zones) and are forced to do their work. It is quite simple actually female flowers have a little melon below them and male flowers don’t have them. Male flowers are tend to be plentiful just pick up one and rub the stamen (the yellow part) over the female flower. Tada Now all we have to do is wait till the fruit forms. Ripe fruits appear approx. 40 days after the pollination.

Male Flower

DISEASES AND PESTS

Usually, you can easily care and look after the watermelon growing in a pot. Still, it is little prone to diseases when exposed to too hot-humid or too cold weather, or due to waterlogged soil. Common garden pests like aphids, cucumber beetles and those that affect the squashes and cucumbers can infect it. Root diseases are avoided using new growing medium and avoiding soil from garden.

Slugs and rodents can damage the fruits and plants. Slugs can be removed by hands and damage by rodents can be avoided by growing the plants vertically or by having a cat. Cat will also play important role by defending ripe fruits from birds.

FRUIT & SUPPORT

Once the fruit starts to form, make sure to give it some support. Use netting, a bag or a stretchable cloth to create a hammock under the fruit to support it. The trick for getting best quality fruits is to not letting the plant set so many fruits. 2-3 fruits at the same time for large fruit varieties and 4-5 fruits for the smaller one is sufficient. Another important point is that once the fruit reaches its full size reduce the watering as over watering can reduce the sweetness of the fruit. Still make sure that it is properly watered.

HARVESTING

Finally all that smart work is gonna pay-off . The harvesting period depends on the climate, season, and variety. Generally, it usually begins 80-90 days later after seed sowing and between 30 to 50 days after flowering. Flowering and fruit setting continue for several weeks until the weather remains favorable and you’ll get several harvests.

Ripe fruit does not seem special. Change in smell and colors of the skin does not occur. To see if the fruit is ripe, you should knock with fingers on the surface of the watermelon. If you hear a dead, hollow sound, this means that the fruit is already ripe. Another method is to check the tendril if it is fading and half dead then your watermelon is almost ripe. If it is faded, the fruit is ripe or overripe. If the fruit is resting in soil then we can check the bottom of the fruit for faded yellowish white to know that the fruits are ripened. If the bottom of the fruit is white then the fruit is yet to ripe.

That is all you need to know about growing and taking care of watermelons in containers. We hope that this post is useful to you. If you do find this useful please help others by sharing this. After all what can be better than making ones summer more juicy and delightful? Stay tuned for more. Happy farming!